OWL recently added performance data for VC and PE funds, including benchmarks by asset class and vintage year, as we highlighted in our last product update.
Our initial data set covers over 8,500 funds disclosed in a variety of public disclosures and collected via FOIA requests. This data set in OWL will continue to grow, and today we’ll look at the best performing funds in the initial group.
Venture Capital
Below is a table of the top 10 VC funds in OWL’s data, ranked by TVPI:
KPCB VII meaningfully outperforms all other private funds from the 1994 vintage:
According to Los Angeles County ERA’s public documents, its $3.8 million commitment to the fund resulted in a total distribution of $121.6 million as of 6/30/25.
KPCB VII owned meaningful stakes in some of the biggest names from the dot-com boom including:
Netscape (the early internet browser founded by Marc Andreessen and Jim Clark, later acquired by AOL)
@Home (the cable line-based ISP that rose to a valuation of $35 billion before filing for bankruptcy 2 years later)
Excite (the early search engine that famously declined to buy Google for $750,000 in 1999, which later merged with @Home before its subsequent bankruptcy)
Juniper Networks (the networking hardware manufacturing pioneer that Kleiner backed in 1996 with a $200,000 pre-seed investment; the firm has called it its most profitable venture investment ever at a 2,500x return)
While this data set is limited by what is disclosed in public filings or FOIA requests, OWL’s data includes performance for firms like Sequoia, USV, Thrive, Khosla, Founders Fund, D1 Capital, Ribbit Capital, and Greenoaks. A selection is below, and you can find much more from these managers on their pages in OWL or on the private fund returns search on OWL.
In Friday’s newsletter, OWL users also received lists of top-performing private equity and credit funds. If you’d like to learn more about how to track these returns using OWL, reach out!
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About Old Well Labs
OWL is an intelligence platform built for allocators, by allocators. Leading endowments, foundations, and family offices use the system to find, monitor, and connect with thousands of fund managers globally. OWL's analytics engine has collected over one billion data points from 65 countries. We make it easy for allocators to find and track information about the managers they care about – not just positions but also performance analytics, people data, business information, and details about the manager investments of other allocators.
Disclaimers
Returns represent the return on invested capital of publicly disclosed long positions, as calculated by OWL. Actual returns may vary based on a number of factors, including (but not limited to) undisclosed positions, short exposure, non-equity holdings, cash holdings, and lagged disclosure of positions.
This newsletter and the material on the Old Well Labs platform are for informational purposes only and should not be considered investment advice or a recommendation of any particular security, manager, or strategy. Certain investment managers, funds, or limited partners (“LPs”) referenced herein may be current or prospective clients of Old Well Labs, and Old Well Labs may have business relationships with such parties. Accordingly, references to any manager, fund, or LP should not be construed as an endorsement, recommendation, or solicitation. Old Well Labs shall not be liable for any investment gain or loss that may occur from the use of this material. No part of this material may be reproduced in any form or used in any publication without express written permission from Old Well Labs.